Less Than Angels (17 page)

‘I’m not sure if they are dancing men,’ she said uncertainly, ‘but they are certainly very nice. There is no harm in them.’

Mrs. Beddoes hesitated over this doubtful recommendation. Perhaps even a hostess seeking young men for a dance demands something more positive than the assurance that there is no harm in them. ‘Are they tall?’ she asked.

‘Digby is very tall—over six feet, I should say. Mark is of medium height, perhaps a little shorter than Tom,’

‘Well, that sounds ideal,’ Mrs. Beddoes put on her gloves and then suddenly said in a confidential tone, ‘My dear, there is this terrible difficulty of getting hold of enough suitable young men. The regular ones get so blasé and often don’t turn up at all, and poor Lalage is five foot
eleven
—girls seem to be enormous these days, don’t they.’

‘And to think that they grew up under the Labour Government and austerity,’ said Catherine.

‘Yes, that
is
strange,’ Mrs. Beddoes looked troubled for a moment, ‘But things are all right
now’
she added obscurely. ‘Thank you, Miss Oliphant, for all your help. I shall tell Naomi how kind you have been. Perhaps I shall write a note to Tom,’

‘The bus stop is a few yards down the road, or shall I get you a taxi?’ Catherine asked.

‘Well. . ,’ Mrs. Beddoes smiled apologetically. ‘I think a taxi, please. I’m rather tired and it will be getting on towards the rush hour now. They tell us
not
to use public transport between 4.30 and 6.30, don’t they,’

So for the second time that day Catherine saw a member of Tom’s family into a taxi. The day was coming to its end, and although it had been tiring and upsetting it had at least been full and that, she supposed, was all to the good. Pain, amusement, surprise, resignation, were all woven together into a kind of fabric whose colour and texture she could hardly visualize as yet. Something with little lumps on it, she thought, knobs or knops as it said in the fashion magazines. The meeting with Tom’s aunt had somehow pleased and comforted her; being without relations herself, she could, as it were, rejoice that others should have aunts, and now that there was nothing disgraceful about her relationship with Tom perhaps she might even visit his other aunt in her hotel in South Kensington.

But as evening approached she began to wish that somebody would telephone her and take her out to dinner. She thought of various men she knew but realized philosophically that it was unlikely that any of them would know of her plight and she was too proud to telephone. The best thing to do if you’re lonely, she thought, is to seek out some other lonely person, but she could only think of Alaric Lydgate and somehow she did not feel that meeting him once at the garden fence was enough to justify a further advance on her side. And in any case, she told herself, she wasn’t really lonely; it just felt rather strange not to have Tom there. But no more strange than when he had been away in Africa.

She lay in bed, sleepless, wondering if he were comfortably setded, but she mustn’t be fussy and ring up too soon. She wished she had a ‘nice book’, something that would take her out of herself, but the bookshelf by her bed wasn’t very encouraging, and only made her think what very strange books people gave as Confirmation presents. Obviously, she thought, noting the little leather-bound volumes, they were chosen for thèir size and colour. Browning, Housman’s
Shropshire Lad,
the E
Jdbaiyat
of Omar Khayyam—surely the gay or despairing pagan sentiments of these authors were dangerous to a young girl embarking on her religious life? The only real book of devotion she had, suitably enough from her headmistress, told her that we are strangers and pilgrims here and must endure the heart’s banishment, and she felt that she knew that anyway. 

Tom
opened his eyes reluctantly. He had been dreaming that he was back in Africa, but when he woke up and found where he really was he turned over on his side again and lay staring at the wall, distempered a rather dirty cream, on which the sun was shining brightly. Too bright to last, he thought gloomily, and closed his eyes again. Outside a train rattled by.

The night before, Mark and Digby had thought he needed cheering up and taking out of himself; they had spent a manly evening drinking beer, whose effects are not always particularly cheering. His life had started on its new lap now; no Catherine, a little Deirdre and a great deal of work. It was not the kind of life that made him leap out of bed eagerly in the mornings. He supposed it was too much to expect Mark or Digby to make tea and bring it to him, as a woman would have done, so he eventually crept into the kitchen and started to make it himself. Mark and Digby soon joined him, the latter singing an air from
La Bohème,
because, as he put it, the light-hearted squalor of their lives reminded him irresistibly of that opera. Tom and Mark were more taciturn, not approving of music in the early morning, and being unable to sing anyway. There was plenty of milk and cornflakes, not quite enough bread and only two eggs, but they made themselves some kind of a breakfast and then left to do a good day’s work in various libraries. It was vacation time now and there were no seminars or classes.

Tom had arranged that Deirdre should not visit him until he had got properly settled in, whatever that might entail, and so it was not until nearly a week later that she saw his new room for the first time.

‘Shall we meet some grim landlady on the stairs?’ she asked, as they approached the house with its peeling pillars.

‘No, she doesn’t live on the premises, luckily. There are just the three flats occupied by students of various kinds. Ours is on the first floor.’

‘No pictures of highland cattle,’ she said quickly, when they were inside the narrow hall of the flat.

Tom, feeling her need for reassurance, put his arm round her shoulders. ‘What have you done to your hair?’ he asked. ‘It looks like a chrysanthemum.’

‘I had it cut. Don’t you like it?’

‘Yes, of course, don’t look so worried.’ He opened a door. ‘Well, here it is, the small back room or whatever we call it.’

‘It
is
rather small, but very comfortable, I should think.’ Deirdre had run over to the window to hide her dismay at the general impression of meanness and shabbiness which had overwhelmed her on entering. ‘And you can see the trains from the window. That’s awfully continental, somehow,’ Her eyes, level with his, looked appealingly at him. He, used to looking down at Catherine, found it difficult to meet her glance and turned away to fumble with some glasses and a dark-looking bottle.

‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes, lovely!’

Lovely was perhaps not quite the word, she realized, as she sipped the cold sour red wine. It tasted most peculiar, as if it had gone off or something, but she wasn’t sure if wine
could
go off. I
must
learn to enjoy drinking, she thought rather desperately, or at least the kind of things these people seem to enjoy, beer and funny kinds of wine. For the shameful thing was that she
did
like the drinks Bernard and her brother Malcolm bought for her-gin and orange or rather sweet dark sherry—the kind of drinks ‘nice’ suburban men regarded as being suitable for women, she thought scornfully.

‘Catherine seems to be all right,’ said Tom, relief sounding in his tone. ‘Quite cheerful, in fact,’

‘Oh, I’m glad. Has Mark or Digby seen her?’

‘No, I rang her up this morning,’

‘Why? Had you left something behind?’

He could hear the unconscious reproach in her voice and feel it in her eyes, intently fixed on him, so he said rather irritably, ‘No, but I wanted to know how she was. I can’t
never
hear or see anything of her again, you know.’

‘Of course not-I didn’t mean to be unreasonable. She’s such a sweet person, I want to see her again myself, if she wants to see me.’

There was silence. Deirdre had been walking about the room, for there seemed to be nowhere to sit down except the bed which, after a quick nervous glance, she had rejected for some reason not quite clear to her.

‘I haven’t arranged my books properly yet, as you can see,’ said Tom, indicating the confusion of the shelves and the two chairs littered with papers.

Deirdre knelt down by the shelves, holding her glass in both hands. Women so often find themselves examining a man’s books, trying to find something intelligent to say about them, and even at nineteen Deirdre was beginning to get her share of it.

‘I see you’ve got that book on Social Structure,’ she said. ‘It’s supposed to be very new and exciting, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, perhaps, but I don’t think we want to discuss it now, do we?’ he said gently, taking the book out of her hands.

After a few pleasurable moments Tom remembered that he had resolved to have no more complications in his life until after he had finished writing his thesis, and perhaps not even then. He had not left Catherine because he intended to embark on the same kind of relationship with Deirdre, whatever Catherine might have thought. He wondered whether it was a good thing or not to have accepted Deirdre’s invitation to supper at her home this evening. Parents did not nowadays question young men about their intentions, but it was better when women were without kinship ties, like Catherine, he thought dispassionately, and then they could be rejected at will and without the likelihood of any awkward repercussions. But then, seeing that Deirdre’s eyes had opened and were gazing at him with love, he was horrified at discovering such cynical cruelty in himself, he the tender-hearted, kind to animals, as Catherine always said, and sometimes even weeping at the cinema. He was very fond of Deirdre, but he pushed her away from him rather abruptly and said, ‘Time we were going, isn’t it?’

She was a little hurt at this sudden breaking-off, but he soon reassured her and managed to leave her with the impression that he needed understanding in some particularly subtle way, a thing she had never thought of with Bernard, who always appeared to be so dull and equable as to have nothing in him to understand.

‘Do you mind the suburbs?’ she asked, as they rode on the top of a bus towards her home. ‘I think it’s horrid here, and the people are so dreary.’

‘People can be that anywhere,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘especially when you’re young. I always found that when I lived at home.’

‘But your home is a real country house,’ she said.

‘Yes, but falling into decay and not even old and beautiful enough to be historically interesting. My mother in the garden all day, my uncle crouching over his television set—not so very different from a suburban home, you see.’

‘I suppose you always want what you haven’t got,’ said Deirdre, hurrying Tom past the Dulkes’ house, for a quick furtive glance had revealed Mr. Dulke in his front garden apparently tying up some herbaceous plants.

‘You shouldn’t feel that,’ he said. ‘You’ve all the time in the world to get what you want and I hope you will get it.’

His words, with their air of chilly detachment, as if he could have no part in giving her what she wanted, saddened her, and it was almost a relief when they were swallowed up in the family circle and Malcolm was offering drinks.

‘I’m
so
pleased,’ said Rhoda, taking Deirdre aside. ‘I’ve managed to persuade Mr. Lydgate to join us this evening.’

‘How ever did you do it?’ Deirdre asked.

‘He came out into his garden this morning and I happened to be working in the herbaceous border—he was quite near the hedge, so I called out “Good morning I Isn’t it a lovely day?”, and then I said that the hot sun must remind him of Africa and he agreed that it did.’

‘Well, I suppose he could hardly have said that it didn’t.’

‘No, though he did say that the African sun was even hotter and not so pleasant as this. Then I made a remark about it being nice to be able to have meals out of doors and then—well, I can’t remember
exactly
how the conversation went on, but I seemed to find myself inviting him to supper this evening, and he seemed quite pleased to come. He even smiled through the leaves, I mean, I could see through a sort of gap that he was smiling, and then he came and looked over the top of the hedge, he’s so tall, you see. And he’s really quite good-looking when he smiles. And of course Father Tulliver is coming too, so it will be quite a party.’ Rhoda paused, not so much to draw breath as to admire the arrangement of the room, the drinks set out on a little table and the big vases of mixed garden flowers at strategic points.

Deirdre’s heart sank at the prospect of the evening in such an ill-assorted company, but she consoled herself by thinking that Tom might find the occasion interesting, though he did not seem to have Jean-Pierre’s passion for observing the ritual of English suburban life. All the same he seemed to have fitted himself very well into his surroundings and Deirdre could not help noticing, with a little stab of jealousy, how well he was getting on with Phyllis, her brother’s fiancée.

‘Doesn’t Phyllis look sweet?’ said Rhoda eagerly. ‘That red and white dress is the one she made to go out with Malcolm on her birthday, you know. It was a Butterick pattern.’

‘Yes, it’s pretty,’ Deirdre agreed without much enthusiasm, for Phyllis, being small and blonde with a vivacious manner, was all that Deirdre was not. What was more, she was wearing red shoes which Deirdre believed to be one of those things that men were said to like.

‘Mr. Lydgate’s got some terrifying African masks,’ Phyllis was saying. ‘I saw him wearing one in his garden one night. I nearly died, I was so frightened.’

‘Ah, but they’re worn to intimidate women,’ said Tom in a teasing voice, ‘that’s the whole point.’

‘Jolly good idea,’ said Malcolm heartily. ‘They need to be kept in their places.’

‘Wherever that may be,’ said Phyllis pertly.

‘I’ll soon show you that, my girl,’ said Malcolm. He made as if to box her ears but she evaded him with a pretty gesture.

‘Let me get you another drink,’ said Tom gallantly. ‘Now what was it that put this sparkle in your eye?’

‘One of Malcolm’s cocktails—in the green jug over there,’ said Phyllis, preening herself like a little bird. She smiled at Deirdre in a surprised way, as if meaning to show her that Tom was really much better than she’d expected.